Class

After my first day in Durham, things really busied up. Classes began at 8:30 am beginning on Monday and lasted for over a week. So let me here make some testimony to the school of Body-mind centering. The first day of class began with a seated circle. We were prompted to simply ‘be’ in the space. After a short time, our attention was swept up by an instructor, who’s next prompt was for each of us to get acclimated to the space. “Move however you like, explore all corners, perhaps you would like to stay in one place.” I quickly got the sense that I was in a room with a significant population of dancers, as the ‘however you like’ was interpreted by many as pirouettes, hip gyrations, and patterned arm flairs. I found myself exploring like a hedgehog the perimeters and small, cave-like spaces created by the furniture of the room. We were in the Center for Jewish Life on the Duke University campus, more acutely, in the chapel. The room was as deep as it was wide, with a ten foot perimeter ceiling with rope-light inlay, and a four-sided pyramid vaulted ceiling. At the back of the room (assuming the two glass door entrance from the lobby as the front) was a right-angle triangular two-stair height stage which dropped by the same depth, but only by the count of one in the back two sides. The triangle shape jutted out from the rest of the structure with two full walls of glass, about thirty feet from ground level, so that the view was like that of a museum for tree understories.  (The view was leaves and branches, I believe of a magnolia tree). The reflective quality of the (suspected) magnolia leaves in conjunction with the intensity of mid/afternoon Carolina sunlight meant that a glance out of the window might give you an unflattering glare. There were times however, in in-direct light, when the view provided respite for the eyes during the long class hours. So, exploring the space I recognized that my patterns rather than pirouettes and the like were standing upside-down on my shoulders and rolling into a fetal position in small spaces. I began to suspect that there may be a  breakthrough in personal discovery somewhere in this class. I’ll hold nothing from you, dear reader, that I am writing on the other side of the experience, far away, in a familiar place (the Jacksonville public library, as it were), and I can testify that I was changed by the experience… probably. I don’t know actually, maybe I’m not. I’ve been reading a lot of philosophy. Anyway, back to storytelling. So we (the class) all grab on to fun noodles, and flexi-bands and wooden rods, one object in either hand, and begin moving about the room, feeling the tensions between our limbs grow and diminish, finding homeostasis between our personal experiences and those of our adjoined (by the props) partners to either side of us. This, it was explained to us, is the sensitivity with which we must observe our ligaments and fascia. We sat again in a circle to discuss our observations. We played name-games to learn how to call each other and to get further integrated. This work, Bob said, is really just an excuse to get together. And how.

Explore, discuss, explore, discuss, bathroom break, slides of ligaments, lessons illustrated with props and skeletal models, explore, discuss, explore, discuss, lunch, more slides, more models, more exploration, more discussion, tea break, open questions, bathroom break, guided explorations of pre-natal development, maybe some other things that rhyme with exploring or discussing, aand class.

So we did five days of this. Sometimes in the mornings, we would open with mindfulness meditation which, have you ever had someone masturbate in the same bed as you?

All in all it was exhausting work. Stand up, sit down, stand up, move around; it was like a school for enlightened hokey pokey, whereby the whole body and mind could be engaged. Students, and there were about twenty of us, would periodically cover their faces, or lie prostrate on the floor once they had become saturated with experience. Each arch of exploration ended, however enthusiastically it began or jubilantly it peaked, (as sometimes someone would ‘catch the spirit’) on floor in exhaustion. Thus, the lessons imparted flowed from one into the next very naturally, and anyone could rest assured that their cat-nap would not read as anything other than needing time to absorb the material. I found this a liberating learning model. Likewise, if one needed to stand or roll around or allow their exhalations to activate the vibrations across their vocal chords, effectively producing rhythmic breath-hums, they could so do without judgment.
I took time to draw many times, as my mind was racing. Catching words from the lectures, I would design tags for them in my notebook, or draw bones or ligaments from the slides. 

Durham

There it goes, there goes Jacksonville.

I am one day out of Jacksonville, on the road with my friend and partner, Meghan. A lot has happened though you wouldn't know it at a glance. I am now in Durham, North Carolina. Meghan has known for some time that she would be here this summer. She has been registered for these classes called Body Mind Centering for a year now. She took half of the classes last year, and will finish the course-load within the following three months. If this all seems sudden and foreign to you, don't worry, that makes two of us. I met Meghan only a few weeks ago (though as love goes, it seems like no time at all). We have been on fast forward, she even met my parents. We understood our time together to be brief; she was going off to summer courses, and I likewise abroad to have adventures before my tentative residency at Ringling College in the fall. But alas, I am here in Durham, and now enrolled in a Body-mind Centering course pertaining to the ligaments beginning tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. What have I gotten myself into? Last night I had a hamburger and took two beers. My body slept heavy and my mind dreamed very vividly if not violently. School, school is a theme that has reoccurred in my dreams as of late. The college experience, in all of its abstractions, the thing I never had a chance at having, or thing that I am addicted to being a part of. A plaguing concept which keeps many wandering.

I am 25 now. On my birthday I received a phone call from my friend Riley. He was on his way to visit me in Jacksonville, which is a rough semblance to incorporating me into his weekend holiday- even though my birthday occurred on a Monday this year. We drank and smoked and painted graffiti. When it was time for him to go, it was really time for him to go. I found myself surrounded by his holiday posse, and became the quiet, older, dare I say stoic figure among them. I was the 25 year old among young adults. I saw ass and heard accounts of "just wanting to be twenty-one and selfish for once". I was grateful to have a drawing implement in my hand at the time so I could thoughtlessly draw while they thoughtlessly talked. What worlds we build for ourselves.

Durham is hot, like an oven. Walking around the town feels like walking around how I imagine a giant penitentiary. Giant brick buildings represent tobacco industries. Buildings so large, that they do not register as buildings. Maybe mountains, networked through tunnels ten stories up and presumably below, a big church presence too. The rest of the town's brick infrastructure seems inhabited by 'hip' start-ups and slew of new incorporateds. Maybe North Carolina has good tax laws I wonder. New development strikes a dissonant chord to the old infrastructure, these are mostly high-rise apartments. Its like most of the town is inaccessible. I feel like a groundling in renaissance Venice. What I can do it seems, is go to the cafe', go to the bar, go to the restaurants, and go to the library. I am at the library now. I think I'll go get something to eat.

The light is beautiful here, in the evenings. I have yet to see a sunrise but will presumably once I crash-course into a morning body-mind centering routine. I'm living out of a backpack now, technically, though it doesn't feel at all like it, as Meghan packed her car full of accoutrements and we are sharing a space together in a condominium. This morning we had coffee in house, as well as some blueberries and almonds. What a miracle that the library provides free computer access for a month! Wow!